Great action game with state of the art graphics!
The game is set in the future on the ice world of E.D.N. III, a once prospering colony of earth and humanity, now overrun with aliens called the Akrid and ice pirates. Gameplay 9/10
One thing that I have to say about this game is that it is very immersive - from the intro, to the playable part of the intro where the game eases you into the controls and kicks off the story and through all the missions you accomplish, this game never loses pace.
The controls are easy to learn and using standard WASD and mouse controls you steer your character, young Wayne, through the icy world of EDN III. The most remarkable thing about this game is that it really is an action game. In many modern action games - and don't get me wrong, I do like these other games aswell - it is left up to the player to play the game at a pace that he or she chooses. Most games try to force a gaming speed onto the player by using vast amounts of scripted sequences or making the levels "self-running", meanging all the character can do is steer and shoot. LPEC goes a different way: the player has two different health displays. One is the chracters life-bar and the other is the so called "heat shield" - although they have different names they both basically do the same thing: keep you alive. The notable thing however is, that you constantly lose health/heat due to the freezing temperatures and have to constantly replenish yourself by gathering up heat energy that is dropped by killed enemies. By using a very simple principle the game urges you to keep on the move and seek out and engage your enemies. To do so the game offers a lot of weapons, such as the standard machine gun, a shotgun, energy weapons and rocket launchers - and let's not forget crazily oversized anime style weapons, such as the huge gatling gun. You can carry a maximum of two weapons at a time and have to choose which ons to lug around with you. The enemies are all very well done, from evil ice pirates to hideous insecty aliens that burst from out of the snow - all of them have believable weaknesses such as the heat storage of the aliens - a glowing spot which is extremely vulnerable to your fire. The tactical part is that these spots tend to be farthest away from you and to get to them you need to get through an angry alien first. The fights range from easy versus the small ones to incredibly tough versus boss enemies.
The buildup is linear, but very well done and seldomly boring.
Graphics 10/10 You may think you've seen many great games and know your way around special effects, but I doubt you've ever seen anything like the smoke and other effects in this game.
The clouds of smoke billow beautifully, the explosions are really powerful and the snow simply looks ... well like snow, but thats the whole point of it really.
The character designs range from anime inspired characters to the great aliens and the ice pirates, however all of them are extremely well done and look stunning. Especially in the game graphic cut scenes you get to see the power of the facial animations - very, very lifelike.
The surroundings on EDN III are equally awesome, the lost cities are filled with details such as road signs, corpses of wars from long ago and car wrecks buried in the snow.
You leave footsteps, motion blurs, bullets tears holes into everything and the gusting wind adds to the experience - overall the game is graphically top notch - especially using Direct X 10.
Sound 9/10 The sound is not very notable, however solid and hardly has weaknesses. The music is orchstral and driving like it should, weapons boom like they should, the aliens scream like they should, the pirates yell like they should and the wind howls like it should - no errors here, but nothing spectacular either.
Value 9/10 A very good action game with nasty aliens, evil pirates and a cool setting, might be quite short with only 12 missions, but better short and good than long and boring ... or something like that. The value of this game is good, if you like shooty-type action games and like Fallout-like settings then what is there to consider? Go get the game and enjoy EDN III !
Reviewer's Tilt 10/10
Being a huge fan of the Fallout series and this game being a "Fallout in the snow" I loved running around EDN III - so the reviewers tilt of course is 10 out of 10. If you like action games, can get yourself to like the setting and enjoy fast paced non stop action, then you can't go wrong on this one.